Washingon Memo; Senate Panel's Partisanship Troubles Former Members

By SCOTT SHANE

Published: March 12, 2006

The latest exchange of fire between the top Republican and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee happened to be about the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. But the tone of recrimination and hurt feelings, sarcasm and distrust that suffused the statements of the two men, Senators Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, and John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, was familiar from many previous disputes.

''I don't think it's a stretch to say that many in the minority would prefer to serve on the Committee Against Everything the Bush Administration Does,'' Mr. Roberts wrote on March 1 in the Congressional newspaper The Hill.

Mr. Rockefeller shot back, ''My Republican colleagues would prefer to operate in the dark.'' And, he told reporters, the committee was ''under the control of the White House through the chairman.''

Mr. Roberts indignantly followed up, saying he did not like being portrayed as the Bush administration's lapdog.

It is the same tone that has left the committee deadlocked over the last 18 months over how to address a host of incendiary issues, including how the Bush administration used prewar intelligence on Iraq and the rules for detention and interrogation of terror suspects.

Set up three decades ago with special rules to avoid partisan battles over sensitive national security policies, the Senate Intelligence Committee today rarely manages to do anything on a bipartisan basis. The breakdown, which some attribute to senators' personalities and some to staff members' taste for political combat, is a development that past committee chairmen of both parties call deeply disturbing.

''Really, politics should stop at the door of that committee,'' said former Senator Warren B. Rudman, a New Hampshire Republican who served on the committee in the early 1990's. ''I don't know whether Roberts is right or Rockefeller is right. But I do know that when you lose bipartisan oversight by that committee, you lose something very, very important.''

David L. Boren, a former Democratic senator from Oklahoma and committee chairman in the 1980's, called the current state of affairs ''heartbreaking.''

''I think it is a disservice to the American people,'' said Mr. Boren, now president of the University of Oklahoma.

The partisan standoff has had practical consequences. Though the committee managed to complete a well-regarded investigation of flawed intelligence on Iraq's weapons, it has been stalled for months over the completion of the second phase of that inquiry, which examines how policy makers used the intelligence.

Even as the American news media and European parliaments have produced report after report on the Central Intelligence Agency's handling of terror suspects, the committee has held no hearings on the topic and conducted no formal investigation.

This week, in party-line 8-to-7 votes, the committee rejected the Democrats' call for a full committee investigation of the eavesdropping program and adopted a Republican plan for a seven-member subcommittee to conduct oversight.

The House Intelligence Committee has sometimes mirrored the Senate divisions, with Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman, squaring off against Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat. But there has been less open rancor.

Mr. Rudman, the former Republican senator, said he believed the Senate committee should investigate and hold hearings on several subjects it had skirted, including the practice of ''rendition'' of suspected terrorists to countries where torture is common, and the justification and value of the surveillance program.

But the supercharged political atmosphere has hamstrung oversight, he said.

''The Republicans are very sensitive to the idea that the Democrats are attempting to embarrass the White House, even when there's a legitimate issue to look into,'' Mr. Rudman said.

Clearly, one reason for the divisiveness is that ever since the 2001 terrorist attacks placed national security at the center of Americans' concerns, the most contentious issues of the era have come before the committee. It has become a natural battleground.

Mr. Rockefeller said in a statement that he often felt his choice was either ''roll over and let the administration dictate the activities of this committee'' or fight.

''Whether it was the Iraq war, detention of prisoners or the N.S.A. program, the White House appeared to play a significant role in deciding what the committee would and would not do,'' he said, saying that this was undermining the committee's oversight function.

Democrats may talk about oversight, Mr. Roberts wrote in The Hill, but ''they seem less interested in fixing the intelligence community's problems than in the political benefit to be achieved by exploiting them.'' His staff members point reporters to a 2003 Democratic staff memorandum that appeared to lay out such tactics.

Time may have softened the memories of nostalgic committee old-timers. But by all accounts, the committee for most of its history has managed to avoid or at least mute party squabbling. Mr. Boren said that in his six years on the committee, which encompassed the Iran-contra affair, there were only two roll-call votes.

''It wasn't always easy,'' Mr. Boren said, ''but we sat and talked until we reached bipartisan agreement on a subject.

''We felt we were there to know about secret programs and stand in for the American people. We weren't there as Democrats and Republicans. We were there as trustees.''

If that position sounds na?, it is echoed by some current members of the committee, who sound bewildered by the acrimony.

Two committee members, Senators Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, traveled to Iraq last weekend and spent hours talking over the committee's predicament.

''We agreed that the stakes are so high that the committee has to find a way to ramp the partisanship down,'' Mr. Wyden said.

Ms. Snowe said she joined the committee in 2002 in part because ''it was one of the last vestiges of nonpartisanship.'' Now, she said, she is ''perplexed and dismayed by the deep-seated division.''

The two senators say they often disagree but always get along. Whether Mr. Roberts and Mr. Rockefeller can do the same remains to be seen, though by this week's end both men seemed to be hinting at a new effort at comity.

"This condition of partisanship cannot stand,'' Mr. Rockefeller said. ''There has got to be a way out, and I will do everything I can to be helpful in that regard."

For his part, Mr. Roberts wrote in USA Today that his opponents were to blame for the ''partisan rancor.'' But he concluded on a more positive note.

''When it comes to national security,'' he wrote, ''we should fight the enemy, not each other.''

Photo: The Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Senators John D. Rockefeller IV, left, Democrat of West Virginia, and Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, has been deadlocked on contentious security issues for 18 months. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)